University of Virginia Library

I. The Clerical Alumni

RELIGIOUS MINISTRATIONS IN STATE UNIVERSITIES BY DENOMINATIONAL
AGENCIES

By Rev. Beverley D. Tucker, Jr., D.D., of the Episcopal Theological Seminary,
Alexandria, Va.

The opportunity for service which the State universities offer to the
Church is one that has been largely neglected in the past. The older universities
and colleges in America were established under definitely religious
auspices, and long after the rise of the State university the various Christian
communions tended to limit their sense of responsibility to those
educational institutions, which bore the imprimatur of their respective
denominations.

Moreover, with the principle of the separation of Church and State
fundamental in our national constitution, the problem of how the Church
may wisely minister in a State university is a delicate and complicated one.
The utmost care has to be exercised to avoid denominational prejudices—
no system will be tolerated in which the privileges are not theoretically equal
for members of every religious affiliation. As a corollary of this principle of
religious freedom, the system adopted should not involve any form of coercion;
attendance upon religious exercises must needs be voluntary.

Dr. Philip A. Bruce has recently described at length (in his History of
the University of Virginia) the extreme caution which Jefferson observed in
eliminating every trace of denominational influence in the formative period
of the University of Virginia's life. So scrupulous was he to enforce his
fundamental principle that "education and sectarianism must be divorced,"
that in his original plan for the University, states Dr. Bruce, he made no
real concession to religious feeling beyond providing a room in the Rotunda
for religious worship.

As religion, however, is an irrepressible factor in human life, the demand
that the University should be other than neutral in religious expression
soon made itself felt. The first proposal to make good this deficiency was
put forward by Jefferson himself. The proposal was that each of the principal
denominations should establish its own theological school just without
the confines of the institution. Thereby would have been established a
natural liaison between the secular education of the State and the religious
education of the Christian communions. One can only voice the regret that
the leaders of the Church in that day had not the vision to carry out the
proposal. Through such an arrangement mutual confidence and respect
might have been the resulting relationship between the religious and educational

forces of the State rather than the suspicion and misunderstanding
that has too frequently characterized their mutual attitude.

While this opportunity for coöperation between the University and the
Church on a large scale was not taken, yet the demand for some religious
expression in the life of the faculty and students soon received a modified
provision. As early as 1829 a plan of engaging the services of a chaplain
was undertaken by those interested. The support was arranged by voluntary
subscriptions, and the chaplain elected, in rotation, from the leading
denominations of the State. This plan continued in operation, in one form
or another, until 1896. For a portion of this period regular religious services
were held in one of the University halls set apart for that purpose; later, a
chapel was built on the ground, the funds for the purpose being contributed,
not by the State, but by friends and alumni of the institution.

From 1896 until 1917 the plan was adopted of inviting distinguished
clergymen from the various denominations to conduct religious services in
the Chapel as a substitute for the earlier plan of having a resident chaplain.
The Young Men's Christian Association, through its general secretary,
stood sponsor for the plan and, in addition to the Sunday services, made
provision for Bible study groups and fostered opportunities for social service.

Theoretically there is much to be said for each of these plans. Their
primary motive was to furnish a method of religious cooperation, which
would be interdenominational in character. Practically neither method
proved an adequate solution of the real situation. The latter plan lacked
continuity both in the personality of the leader and in the mode of worship.
Both plans failed to furnish any definite connection with the previous religious
training of the students or to make any positive preparation for the
church life, to which the student might go after leaving the University.

In 1917, the Faculty Committee on Religious Exercises decided to discontinue
the chapel services and to make an appeal, through the Charlottesville
Ministerial Association, to the various religious denominations to assume
a more definite oversight of their adherents at the University. The
immediate occasion for taking this step was the general upheaval at the
University owing to war conditions, but the committee frankly recognized
that the chapel system had served its day and had become a burden to be
borne rather than a stimulus to the religious life of the University. While
such a system might supplement, it could not serve as a substitute for the
organized ministrations of the various communions. Moreover, this appeal
to the Church as such to assume the leadership in providing religious opportunities
for the members of the University was in line with Jefferson's
original policy, namely, of making no provision for theological education in
the University curriculum and proposing that the various denominations
should establish their divinity schools in the university neighborhood.

As early as 1910, the Episcopal Church had taken a positive step in this
direction. Recognizing the inadequacy of the university chapel system in
providing pastoral oversight and cultivating church loyalty; recognizing,
furthermore, the practical difficulty of adding the pastoral care of the Episcopal
students at the University to the extensive parochial duties of the
rector of the local church in Charlottesville, the Diocese of Virginia has
organized a parish, with its own rector, in the University community, for
the avowed purpose of ministering to its adherents among the students and
faculty. An excellent building site has been purchased and a temporary
chapel erected, where for the past ten years regular services have been held.
The plans provide for the building of a permanent church as soon as the
funds are available.

While a local congregation, over and above the student and faculty
members, has come into being, yet the work is regarded in the nature of a
diocesan responsibility. The bishop has authority to insure the selection
of a clergyman who is qualified to be a helpful pastor and preacher to a
student community, and the diocese assumes the obligation of assisting the
local congregation in the financial outlay for building and retaining such a
church.

An alternative to this plan, and one that is being tried in many State
universities, would be to add to the staff of the local congregation a student
pastor, who will serve the university community and foster the affiliation of
the students with the Charlottesville church of their respective denominations.

The fundamental principle to be observed in both of these plans is this,
that the State University, where our young men and women gather from
many parts of the country at a critical stage in their intellectual and spiritual
development, should be regarded as a special field of service by the
Church. It requires an oversight more definite than a collegiate chapel
system can furnish. It calls for leaders, who are especially qualified and
trained for work among students; for leaders, moreover, who can give their
whole time and thought to the moral and religious life of the university
community; and is a work of too great importance to be tacked on as an
incident of the busy life of a local rector or pastor.

In this day when the outlook for Christian unity seems more hopeful
and encouraging than in the past, the system outlined above may seem to
imply a backward step, a building higher the walls of partition. Personally,
I should conceive it as a step forward in the direction of Christian
unity. The colorless, vague religion of a college chapel makes not for
religious unity but for religious negation. I have greater confidence in the
fact that a group of broad-minded student pastors, working together for the
moral and spiritual life of the University, will do far more to create that

attitude of mutual trust and tolerance, which is the first step toward cooperation
and unity. The problems confronting the different college pastors
would be much the same. Through conference and through combined efforts
in service extension and Bible study there will be many natural opportunities
for fellowship in the Christian life. Unless our ideal is for a dead uniformity
rather than for a lively unity, I have greater hope of Christian unity
in the direction of positive loyalties than of amiable negations.

Abstract of an Address by Rev. Samuel Chiles Mitchell, Ph.D., LL.D., of the University
of Richmond

In addition to the plans of the preceding speaker, the only suggestion
I can make is that the various denominations coöperate with the Young
Men's Christian Association in the maintenance of a University Preacher
on permanent tenure. In this way I believe a man on the order of Phillips
Brooks could be secured, who would give his whole strength and time to the
religious life of the University. Such a man as Bishop McDowell, or Dr.
Gilkie, or Dr. Jowett would make a lasting impression upon the University
community by his continuous presence and by his messages, springing out
of the changing needs of the student body.

The advantages of a permanent tenure over the chaplaincy for two
years, which was the custom in my student days here, and over the place of
having different visiting ministers from Sunday to Sunday, are apparent.
By permanency of office you can get a really great personality whose voice
will command attention everywhere. His interpretation of the spiritual life
will be progressive in spirit and cumulative in effect. He will enter sympathetically
into the life of the individual student as well as reënforce the religious
purposes of the University community as a whole.

In Madison Hall we have an agency with which the denominations
can work to this end. Whatever might be lost to specifically denominational
interests by this plan, would in my opinion be more than made up by
the emphasis upon the essentials of Christianity which such a preacher would
give, thus enriching religious life and truth for all through the University.

HOW MAY RELIGIOUS CULTURE BE GIVEN TO THE STATE UNIVERSITY
COMMUNITY?

By Rev. Thomas Cary Johnson, D.D., LL.D., of the Union Theological Seminary, Richmond,
Va.

The subject as assigned—"Religious Culture in State Universities by
Denominational Agencies" suggests several theses which hardly require
discussion in this body, to wit:

First: The university community should have religious culture.

There may be small groups of people here and there which would
dispute this thesis; but it may be asserted safely that the vast majority of
thoughtful people the world over would maintain that the university community,
as certainly as it is included within the grade of rational and
responsible agents and as certainly as it is to exercise an indefinitely large
influence for weal or woe on the rest of the State, should have religious culture.
It may be even more boldly assumed, also, that this body of "clerical
alumni" would consider it worse than a waste of time—an impertinence,
indeed—to set about proving on this occasion, the truth of a thesis which
our very calling proclaims that we hold—a thesis which we can deny only on
pain of professing ourselves to be hypocrites.

Second: The State University in these United States of America cannot
of itself give an adequate religious culture.

Men are found to say: "If theism be true and discovered, and if its
teaching be necessary to the stability of the State, the State may teach it."
Granted for the sake of argument; yet we all say that bare theism—the
doctrine of a personal God, the Creator and Moral Governor of the Universe
—is inadequate religious culture; and for adequate religious teaching the
State has neither warrant nor fitness—no warrant, its constitution gives
none; no fitness through possession of an adequate religious creed, or of a
holy character. So far is it from possessing an adequate creed which it may
teach, its sovereign people hold some of them one thing and some of them
the contradictory thereto. Nor has the State the holiness of character to be
desired in a teacher of religion. The State as represented by its government,
and as represented by the Board of Regents of the University, may be
pious in one era and impious in the next. The State has no fitness, as no
commission, to teach any other religion than bare theism, if to teach that;
and its attempting to do so would be an impious assumption.

Good Americans and good Virginians, it is taken for granted that we all
agree that the State must not attempt to give an adequate religious culture,
and that the State University—an organ of the State—should not attempt it.

Third: That religious denomination which possesses in its creed the
largest amount of cardinal religious truth, is, other things being equal, under
the weightiest obligation to attempt to give religious culture to the university
community. The knowledge of religious truth—the truth about God,
about man's relations to Him and man's duties to Him and to His creatures
—the grasp of the eternal realities—is a possession, a leverage for uplift,
which any true ethics urges him, who has it, to give to his fellows. That
religious denomination, therefore, which claims the largest possession of
religious truth, virtually avows, in the claim, its obligation, circumstances
permitting, to impart that truth to all men; and, in particular, to impart

it, as speedily as possible, to any body of men destined to be as influential
on other men as the university community.

In the present point it is not ours to determine which of the denominations
has most of religious truth and largest ability to impart it. We are
concerned with the principle that largest possession of truth and of power
to put others in possession of it carries the weightiest responsibility to do the
service.

Fourth: Other religious denominations are under obligation to take a
hand in the religious culture of the university community proportioned to
the truth of their teachings and their ability, through holiness of life and
favoring Providence, to put their teachings across. This will hardly be
denied. It cannot be denied consistently by any Christian denomination,
for Christ commissioned his disciples to evangelize every creature and to
disciple all nations.

If the foregoing propositions be accepted as true, we may properly
confine ourselves to suggesting and discussing answers to the question:

How may religious culture be given to State university communities by
Denominational Agencies?

It is conceded that this is not the exact form of the subject set us; but
it is, at the same time, believed that an effectual plan by which the Denominations
can give to the university community religious culture is what is
sought after.

To the present speaker the following seems a practicable plan: Let a
denomination conscious of the possession of priceless religious truth and
conscious of ability to do such service, under the good hand of God, to the
university community, acquire a convenient plot of ground, erect on it a
building containing an auditorium, lecture-rooms, classrooms, reading-rooms,
a room for a specially selected library of the standard religious
literature of the ages—a building for a church of the institutional type in
short; let it endow this Church with such liberality that for it can be commanded
a man of singular abilities as pastor, preacher and lecturer and
teacher. Let him have such helpers as necessity shall dictate. Let him, in
addition to preaching on the Lord's day, and looking after (as a faithful
pastor) his whole contingent in the university community, plan and conduct
a course of study in religion which shall be as effective in disciplining or
informing, or in both disciplining and informing, the mind, as any course
of the same number of hours in the university curricula so that, if the
university pleases, the successful completion of this course may be rewarded
by a credit equalling that received for any elective university course of no
greater number of hours.

Such a plan, if put into operation by any given denomination, would
insure the pastoral oversight of the student and faculty members of the

university community of that denomination; would secure preaching of the
type of doctrine peculiar to the denomination. Those two functions, if ably
performed, would affect the life of the whole community to a degree. And
the special course, taught with vigor, ability and learning, would produce a
more intense effect on the class.

Suppose four denominations had such material plants established and
ably manned, the university community would be affected in no small
degree.

The university would be made a place of larger privilege, its cultural
opportunities would be enlarged as by the establishment of a new chair; and
the character of the whole body morally invigorated and ennobled.

It should not be difficult to secure plants and endowments. There must
be men, in each of the great denominations who would at once see the limitless
importance of bringing such influence to bear on the university community,
and, through the outgoing students, upon the world—men ready to
establish just such foundations as we have described.

Look them out, gentlemen; invite them to make religious culture by the
denomination they love best and respect most a certainty in this city set on a
hill, that the pathway of our future leaders may be lighted not only to true
greatness in this life but to God and blessed communion with Him in the life
beyond.

RELIGIOUS CULTURE IN STATE UNIVERSITIES

By Rev. Byrdine A. Abbott, Editor The Christian Evangelist, St. Louis, Mo

The poet Tennyson in the first part of his immortal elegy on the death of
his college friend, Arthur Hallam, breathes a prayer which might fittingly be
used as the daily litany of both minister and teacher, for it states the whole
case of the true relation of learning and religion. He sings:

True religion includes real education and genuine education must
eventually lead to true religion.

On the recent foundation of the university for the natives of South
Africa the Government declared, according to the British Weekly, that to
educate them without religion would be to raise up a nation of devils.

To educate Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans or any other people
without religion would produce the same result.

The deepest thinkers of our day have come to see the evils of a purely

materialistic education. It makes the world merely a huge machine that
grinds up men and women, soul and body.

The idea is brilliantly expressed by Paul Elmer More in his latest
volume of the Shelburne Essays. He says:

A demon at the wheel of the ship, or in the cab of the engine, or admitted
into life in the formative hours of youth is scarcely more to be feared
than a conscienceless man in possession of the secrets of chemistry, electricity,
government, commerce, or war, or in charge of the ordinary machinery
of society.

These things have filled the modern father and mother with almost a
poignant anxiety as they have seen their sons and daughters go forth to the
great universities with their brilliant and sometimes fierce intellectual lights.

This fear has made it easy for the ill-informed and the mischief-maker to
create prejudice and make cleavage between the church and the university.
To continue this and allow it to grow would result in calamity to civilization.

It would be possible to overcome this problem in the independent
universities by ordinary processes of influence, but the State universities
present greater obstacles, owing to the separation of Church and State in
this country. The church college will afford some relief. Through it the
student may be so thoroughly trained that he will need no special religious
opportunity after getting to the university. It would be possible to make
out a strong case for the position that a student ought not to be admitted to
the State university unless he had had training in a church school of worthy,
educational standards. Plainly, however, this course would be found
impracticable because the State universities will always grow greater and
stronger and more students, rather than fewer, will attend them directly
from the public schools.

It is left to the churches, then, to find a way to follow their young people
to the State universities and throw about them such influences, put before
them such opportunities, and lay upon them such obligations, that in pursuit
of the knowledge and training requisite to their aims in life they will not
surrender the mastership of the soul nor abandon the conviction of the
reality and greatness of God nor of the supreme value of things eternal.
But that the student may keep his spiritual vantage ground the church must

follow him to the classroom, the campus and the dormitory of the university
as far as possible.

It is now twenty-eight years since the Disciples of Christ, the body of
Christians with whom I am identified, took definite steps to supply this
urgent demand. Through the Christian Woman's Board of Missions, an
organization which recently became merged into the United Christian
Missionary Society, it was determined to institute Bible Chairs at such
universities as would receive them, even if only on toleration first. And it
may have been that on their first advent they were very narrowly watched.
They might contain possibilities of annoyance and a certain kind of trouble
even if not of mischief. They might be crusaders of proselyting, they might
stir up friction between the adherents of different denominations, they might
introduce quite an unhealthy emotionalism or at least encourage an unscientific
approach to learning and to life. If there was such cautionary bias
it was unnecessary, for the Bible Chair at the university has proved its value
in many ways.

The Chancellor of the University of Kansas said, referring to one of
these institutions: "The Bible Chair is a real factor in the religious life of
the university, and I desire that its influence increase."

My people are now supporting such chairs at the State universities of
Michigan, Texas, Virginia and Kansas. In addition we have The Bible
College of Missouri, which is operated in its own building at the University
of Missouri, the "Indiana School of Religion" at the University of Indiana,
the Eugene Bible College at the seat of the University of Oregon, and at the
present time, buildings are in course of erection for the "California School of
Religion" in Los Angeles, just across the street from the University of
Southern California. The initial amount of money raised for the "California
School of Christianity" was $800,000 which will be quickly increased
to $1,000,000 and added to thereafter until the school has satisfactory
support.

In addition to these schools and chairs we support student pastors at
Purdue University, the University of Illinois and the University of Washington.
It is their duty especially to establish confidence and form pastoral
connection with our own young people and also to render such Christian
service generally as may be considered proper in the student body at large.

These schools, Bible Chairs, and pastors give fine opportunity for religious
contact with, and training of the young people and they are doing much
to achieve the ends sought by their establishment.

Of course they are absolutely non-sectarian and the Bible Chairs and
schools do not presume to offer courses of study sufficient in themselves to
equip men and women for the pulpit or the mission field. But they bear
witness to the part religion must have in a well-rounded and fully girded life.

They help to create an atmosphere which permeates the entire school and
makes teaching easier and more delightful. They make a moral and
spiritual appeal and, because the big men of the universities like to have them
there, they gain respect from even those who do not patronize them. "The
Bible Chair building itself is a protest against the scientific materialism of
the campus, and stands a silent but impressive reminder that there is a God
of truth and that all truth, both scientific and religious is His truth."

While we do not presume that other and better ways of spiritual
culture for the young people in the State Universities are impossible, we are
happy in what has been achieved in that respect and we hope to increase
the value and number of these agencies in keeping regnant the soul life of the
students destined to become the makers of all the to-morrows.